


Maybe a Little

by bienenalster (pinkspider)



Category: Wicked Lovely Series - Melissa Marr
Genre: Character Study, F/M, M/M, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:54:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5444042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkspider/pseuds/bienenalster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she left Huntsdale, Leslie thought it would be best to cut herself off entirely from the exciting and frightening world of the faeries. But as time went on, she wondered if that was really true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe a Little

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pyrophane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/gifts).



i.

Leslie nearly jumped out of her skin when the rowan guard approached her on the library steps.

 

It was the first time a faery had revealed itself to her since she left Huntsdale. She was shocked to see the faery, more shocked that the first faery to pay a visit was from Summer and not the Dark Court, and most shocked of all by what it had to say.

 

The Summer Queen wished to call upon Leslie in her tiny one bedroom apartment.

 

The rowan’s glamour was good, so none of the other students leaving the library would be any the wiser that Leslie was conversing with a creature they’d never even thought to imagine. She herself was so surprised by the conversation that she forget to worry about the way she would appear to be carrying on an intense conversation with thin air.

 

It was her first semester of college. She wasn’t sure she was ready to welcome any part of Huntsdale back into her life. “Can I think about it?” she asked.

 

The rowan inclined his head. “I will return to this place tomorrow for your answer.” He was gone in an instant.

 

Leslie stood frozen on the stairs. Blood pounded in her ears. Her jaw clenched and her shoulders tightened. Ash wanted to see her. _Queen Aislinn_ , she corrected herself. She’d woken up to find Aislinn at her bedside countless times during her long convalescence, and still she couldn’t reconcile the Ash she knew with the painfully beautiful faerie regent who’d burned a magic toxin right out of Leslie’s back.

 

She was jostled from her reverie by a young man bumping into her. “Sorry, sorry!” he said.

 

“No, it’s my fault,” she replied absently. “I shouldn’t have been just standing on the stairs like that.” She took the stairs two at a time so she could pretend that was the reason her heart was racing. Besides, if she hurried, she’d still make her bus.

 

It had been a month since Leslie had left Huntsdale, and though she had seen neither hide nor hair of any fae, not a day had gone by where she hadn’t thought of them. On the bus, she stared at her lap, her hands balled into fists on her knees. In her apartment, she checked all her locks twice before carefully making herself some tea.

 

She curled up on her futon holding the steaming mug close and breathing in its floral scent. With tea-warmed fingers, she reached back to touch her tattoo. Niall and Irial had been reluctant for her leave, but Niall had been very convincible. He understood in a way Irial never would. And Irial - well, Leslie wasn’t connected to him, but she was sure she didn’t imagine the admiration twined with his concern and sorrow when she said she was leaving. She’d packed her bags and gotten on the bus and not let herself look back for too long.

 

And now Aislinn wanted to bring this back into her life.

 

But she was making sure it _was_ Leslie’s choice. No one else’s.

 

Leslie sipped her tea and calmed down as she remembered how it used to be. When they were in elementary school, Leslie would go home with Ash after school to watch cartoons and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches under Gram’s watchful eye. In middle school, she’d reach through the iron trellis to knock on the door, waving Tiger Beat magazines at Ash, and then they’d braid each other’s hair. By the time they got to high school, they were sneaking out to go smoke and play pool - and sometimes still braid each other’s hair.

 

The entire world had changed for Leslie - for Ash, too.

 

But still. All the memories of two happy, human girls named Ash and Les were still there. So, the next day, Leslie met the rowan guard and told him yes. They set a date for Queen Aislinn and a small retinue to come calling. Leslie wondered what one did to receive a faery monarch into a crappy 600 square foot apartment.

 

Maybe Ash still liked peanut butter and jelly.

\---

When Queen Aislinn crossed the threshold into Leslie’s tiny apartment, the heat was instantly unbearable. In such a small space, she was sweltering. As always, the Queen literally blazed with glorious beauty.

 

“Could you maybe turn it down a little?” Leslie asked.

 

“Oh. Yes. Sorry,” replied Aislinn with an apologetic grin. The room returned to its previous, comfortable temperature, and a cool breeze blew through from out of nowhere, teasing Aislinn’s hair and rustling the short skirt she wore. Her skin faded to a gentle, sunkissed glow. It should’ve been alien, but in the middle of the fae beauty, Ash’s grin was the same as it ever was - lopsided and guarded, but genuine nonetheless.

 

“Sandwich?” Leslie offered.

 

“Yes, thank you,” the smile lit up Ash’s eyes like sunbeams on a clear day. They took a seat at Leslie’s rickety kitchen table. “Peanut butter and jelly?” Ash asked, still smiling.

 

“You know it,” Leslie returned. They munched in silence for a few minutes.

 

“So,” Leslie broke in. “What did you want to talk about?”

 

“No niceties?” asked Ash with crinkled brow and a rueful smile. When Leslie shrugged, Ash continued. “Leslie, you’re one of the best friends I ever had. And I failed you. I kept you in the dark. I’m sorry.”

 

Leslie opened her mouth to say “It’s okay,” then thought better and shut it. If Ash couldn’t lie, neither would she. “You were in a difficult position.”

 

Ash bowed her head. “I only ever wanted to protect you, to keep you out of my world.” (Leslie had to chuckle bitterly at that.) “I can’t make it up to you.”

 

“You don’t need to. Nothing was your fault.” At that, Aislinn stared into Leslie’s eyes, no doubt second guessing whether that was what Leslie truly felt.

 

“I still wanted to see… Would you mind if a few rowan stayed here? They’d remain out of your sight. It’s just. Keeping some of us at the edges may be the best way for you to stay out of our world.”

 

Leslie fiddled with the plate in front of her. There were still a few triangle-shaped sandwiches on it. “Hey. Ash. Do you wanna see the campus?”

 

“Yes, very much.”

 

It was still warm enough out that Leslie didn't need a coat. A few students were stretched out on blankets in front of the library, taking advantage of the late summer sun while doing their assigned reading. An intense game of ultimate frisbee was underway on the quad. It was the University of Anywhere, USA.

 

“This seems nice. Do you like college so far?” asked Ash.

 

“It is, and I do. It’s what I need.” Leslie sat down under one of the smaller trees. Aislinn settled to the ground with inhuman grace before removing her shoes and digging her toes into the dirt. They watched the Frisbee game. Skins were winning, and both teams were yelling because of it.

 

“Do you wish you could go to college?”

 

Ash looked straight ahead. “I’m glad you can, Leslie.”

 

Leslie decided not to say anything about Ash’s dodge. Instead she said, “Remember the time we hustled those Hell’s Angels guys who came through town?”

 

“ _Yes_. God, we were so scared. We weren’t even that good at pool yet!”

 

“I bet they took pity on us. We were so tiny. And so obvious, geez.”

 

“‘It’s my first game of pool ever, mister! I don’t even know how to hold the cue! Hey, let’s bet $15. Okay, $20 this time!” Ash pitched her voice into a barely pubescent squeak. Or tried, anyway. It still sounded as musical as windchimes on a lazy July afternoon when you welcomed the breeze mainly because you couldn’t be bothered to haul yourself in front of the wall unit. _Faeries._

 

“Think they were real Hell’s Angels?”

 

“Def-” Ash cut off abruptly. She shook her head no with a smile. “Maybe someday we can hustle again.”

 

“Maybe.” The Frisbee game wound down, and the players peeled off into groups of threes and fours.

 

“I truly am sorry, Les. I should’ve seen that things weren’t okay with you. I should’ve done something before… before _he_ got involved. Can you ever forgive me?”

 

“Nothing was your fault,” Leslie replied, and she felt proud of how little of a tremor there was in her voice.

 

“For what it’s worth, I miss you. But you made a good choice, coming here. It’s smart. You should stay away from us. All of us. Please say you will.”

 

“I don’t know, Ash…”

 

Ash frowned. “My rowan guard will at least make sure that only fae you want to approach you approach you. They’ll keep a distance. It’ll only be one or two here at a time. I just want to protect you now, since I couldn’t… May I?”

 

“Can they stay at least a block away from my apartment?”

 

“If that's what you want.”

 

Leslie scooted closer to Ash and put an arm around her shoulder. It was warm to the touch. Too warm. She leaned her head against the side of Ash’s. “Then yes,” she said. “I’m fine with it.”

 

“Thank you,” Ash shifted and put her arms around Leslie. “Les, you are so, so strong.”

 

“I miss you,” Leslie had to talk around a small lump in her throat. “I miss when we were kids.”

 

Ash didn’t say anything, just hugged her back harder.

\--

Two weeks later, Leslie saw a rowan guard across the quad while she walked to her bus stop. She grinned. Maybe she could choose to let Ash’s world in, in small doses.

 

ii.

Leslie didn’t _love_ her tattoo. “Love” wasn’t the right word for how it made her feel. There were too many conflicting emotions intertwined with the ink for that. It was her story, caught more in a picture than it ever could be in words.

 

If nothing else, her time with the Dark Court had left her far more able to see individual threads in a tapestry of emotions. Pain was in the tattoo, and lust, and desperation. There was her entrapment and her escape, and always Irial, whom she’d left but would never truly leave behind. Most of all, there was satisfaction - a certain kind of peace shot through with fading pain and hard-won strength.

 

She _valued_ her tattoo.

 

But she hadn’t given much thought to how to explain the design to people. Mostly, it was covered, but now and then it peeked out (pretty literally) from a tank top or a swimsuit, and her new friends asked.

 

“It’s sort of a collaboration between me and a friend back home. I just wanted to get something unique.”

 

“Yeah, I guess it is a little, uhm, eerie.”

 

“Ha ha, it is a little like having eyes in the back of my head, you’re right.”

 

Sometimes, she wished she could tell Jill and Michael more about what it meant. Of course, she didn’t. She told herself it was because they shouldn’t know about faeries. She wondered if it was because she didn’t think they should know about her.

 

Leslie didn’t have regrets, exactly. She had uncomfortable truths, is what she had. Truths like, she wasn’t actually much better than the Dark Court. Like she was a hypocrite, like she wasn’t trying to run away from the Court so much as from herself.

 

But recognizing those truths and facing them were two different things, and so Leslie did her best to set the thoughts aside and leave them behind when she could. She studied hard. She got a work study job in the admissions office. She made a point of spending time with her new friends and picking up new hobbies from them, including the coffee shop. Leslie had never been a coffee person, but she was learning.

 

It helped to keep her darker thoughts away, at least until she tried to fall asleep. By the light of day, she’d never been anything more than what she seemed.

 

Studying in a coffee shop put more miles between her and Huntsdale than any bus ride could. She was distant and safe and able to fool herself.

 

Until.

 

The first time Irial had shown up at the coffee shop, she had almost choked to death on her latte. Jill had pounded on her back, and Leslie had laughed it off with a croak of “drinking problem.” Irial had raised his eyebrows and his paperback novel in silent salute. He was as beautiful and ominous as ever, and Leslie’s heart pounded against her ribs while she fought down the dual urges to run into his arms and to run away from him as fast and as far as she could. She swallowed hard and shook her head internally, trying to focus back on the conversation. The next time she looked up, he was gone.

 

He wasn’t there the next day, or two days after that. But exactly one week after the time she saw him, Leslie went back, armed with her psych 101 textbook. Iri showed up again after she’d been sitting there 10 minutes trying her hardest to study since that is emphatically why she had come to the shop in the first place. He sank languidly onto the sofa pushed against the back wall and winked at her across the room. She tightened her grip on her mug and smiled back at him. It was all she could do not to get up and beeline straight toward him, but she somehow managed to stay in her seat and mostly stare at her textbook. She didn't manage to actually take notes, though.

 

The next week she came at the same time, but with backup. The same as the previous week, when Irial entered the shop, he ordered his coffee, then sat down and pulled out a book (he was reading “Either/Or” this week). He made brief eye contact with Leslie before turning his attention entirely to his novel while she plunged headlong into a deep conversation with her friends. This studied cold shoulder was itself a sort of embrace. But with Michael and Jill there, it was a lot easier to enjoy Iri’s presence. They were a buffer against her past. Their ignorance kept her safe.

 

Still, it was some kind of solace to know that Irial understood everything about her tattoo. When he came to the coffee shop to watch her, there were many times she could tell that his eyes were boring right into the ones in her tattoo. Thinking about his eyes on her back made her think about his hands on her back, and thinking about _that_ made her flush.

 

As much as a million kinds of excitement coursed through Leslie when Irial was behind her, there was also security in it and comfort – the knowledge that someone with very real power had her back. Personally had her back. (Literally, too.) But, she didn’t want to have cause ever again to ask for that kind of help, and she never wanted to deal with any of the inevitable consequences that could come with Iri’s particular brand of favors.

 

Whenever Iri came into the shop, he brought a new paperback book and the same old tumult of mixed feelings: lust and companionship and fear and possessiveness and belonging and regret and gratitude and a million other things Leslie couldn’t even begin to untangle.

 

She was oddly comfortable with being scared by how much she liked it.

 

iii.

Ever since the night Ren had showed up and Iri had - Leslie forced herself to think it - killed him, Niall had started calling Leslie on a semi-regular basis. They just chatted, talking about her classes, her new friends, what she was reading, anything other than Faeries and Huntsdale. Then, one night in late March, Niall finally brought up the Court.

 

“Are you really asking me for advice on politics? I’m a _college student._ I’m going to major in Sociology or something. I’m not an authority on court policy.” Leslie shifted the phone between her ear and shoulder and scowled down at the bacon sizzling for her dinner.

 

“Perhaps not. But you know what’s right and wrong, and you _know_ the Dark Court,” Niall’s voice came across the line with a little bit of a crackle. “May I have your opinion?”

 

Bacon grease popped on Leslie’s hand, and she hissed. “Ouch. OK, alright. I’ll try. So, let me get this straight. You’re worried about keeping track of halflings like Ani and Rabbit?”

 

“Not exactly. The question is more what to do with the ones that don’t want to be part of the Court - that want to try to live human lives. There are certain parties who think… that should not be allowed.” Niall’s ominous pause wasn’t lost on Leslie. “That they must participate in the Court or else. Really, I just want your perspective.”

 

“Wouldn’t it introduce a bit of chaos if they were free to leave?” Leslie kept her tone as light as she could. She turned off the stove and gripped the countertop. Her knuckles were white. “You guys are all about that. Uhm. I need… Just let me think a moment.”

 

On the other line Niall hummed in agreement. Leslie took a deep breath. “They should be able to do it,” She continued. “I have no idea what you should do to make sure they can make that choice. But... What does Gabriel think? Or anyone who,” she looked for the right word. “Who attended me. They have some idea what it was like to be part of the Court and part not -- or at least, how to be around someone like that.”

 

“Thank you, Leslie,” Niall said. His voice was warm, resolute. He sounded determined and authoritative. _Kingly_ , Leslie thought. A shiver ran down her spine. Niall was a king, and here he was listening to _her_. She had no power, but she was still powerful.

 

“Sure,” she said absently, her mind spinning with the enormity of the phone call. She concentrated as hard as she could on where she was: her tiny apartment kitchen. The parquet countertop. A plate with paper towels to catch up extra grease from her bacon. The window ajar, letting in both a crisp autumn breeze and the sound of a dog barking down the street. The faucet dripping and the smell of her dinner coating the air.

 

“Leslie?”

 

“I’m sorry. I. I need to go,” she stammered. She allowed him a moment to say goodbye before hanging up.

 

Her bacon was too chewy. She ate it in front of her small TV, trying her best to watch the stupidest TV show she could while reminding herself she was living just like a normal person her age. It was going to be fine.

 

iv.

Leslie knew something was up when the caller ID said Donia’s name. Donia never called.

 

Donia began to speak and the world blurred. Leslie fell back against her kitchen wall with a thud. She slumped down to the floor. Ash called next, and by the time Leslie was off the phone with her, her eyes were swollen and painful.

 

“Please. Stay there for now. Please. Huntsdale isn’t safe.”

 

“Love you, Ash,” was all Leslie said before she hung up. She didn’t want to make any promises. She waited two hours before calling Niall. It went to voicemail. “Niall, Ash and Donia told me. I –Call me back. Please. Once you get this message, call me back.“ And then she couldn’t stop herself simply sobbing into the phone, so she hung up.

 

Leslie didn’t go to Huntsdale, but she didn’t go to classes either. She spent a week in her apartment, trying to call Niall and always getting voicemail.

 

Then, one night, there was a knock on her door. She looked through the peephole and saw a tall, dark-skinned woman with a leather jacket and ear plugs. Leslie recognized her as one of Gabriel’s Hounds, so she opened the door.

 

“Niall sent us,” she said.

 

“Let me get a few things,” replied Leslie.

 

Ten minutes later, she hefted on her backpack and locked the door to her apartment. She climbed up on the back of a Steed that looked like a giant mountain lion made of fire and wrapped her arms around the Hound’s waist.

 

They raced through the dead of night, the wind tearing at them.

 

 _Please be safe, Niall_ , Leslie prayed internally. _Please_.

 

It was only a little over two hours before she was lying in bed with Niall, cradling his head on her chest and stroking his hair as he slept. She clutched him to her heart and wished with all her might she had gotten to hold Iri like this one last time. Niall shifted restlessly in his sleep, and she pulled him a little closer.

 

Her eyes were puffy and burning from the crying. She’d managed to stay stone-faced and imperious until Niall finally fell asleep with the bridge of his nose nestled against her neck and one arm flung over her shoulder. Then, she finally let herself cry, smoothing his hair down as her tears intermittently dripped off her face onto the top of his head.

 

Leslie stayed careful to keep still and silent. They would have time to mourn Irial together later. For now, she just needed to hold Niall together until he could do it himself.

 

In the middle of the night, Leslie woke up. “Niall?” she asked, groggy.

 

“Ah, no,” came the reply, and Leslie turned to see Irial’s crooked smile on Niall’s lips, and her breath caught in her throat. “You came back, my girl.”

 

\---

 

Leslie couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath the first time Irial touched her with his own hands. He hadn’t done that since she left the Dark Court. In her dreams and nightmares, his hands had touched every inch of her body, but the reality of it shocked her like splashing cold water on her face after waking up in the morning. Not unpleasant or unexpected, but a jolt nonetheless.

 

Just like she had longed for and dreaded over the past year, she was back in his bed, but not under any circumstances she had ever imagined. For example, she would not have fathomed that Niall would be there too, but then she also never would have predicted that Irial would die and then come back from the dead. It had been a capital-W Week, to put it mildly, and all three of them were giddy and shaken and desperate for any shred of comfort.

 

And that’s how they wound up in a California king in the second floor suite of Niall’s home.

 

Life was weird like that.

 

“Are you going to stay?” asked Niall in a voice that clearly indicated he knew the answer.

 

Leslie took a drag on the cigarette she’d stolen from Iri, delaying her answer: “You know.”

 

To her right, Irial chuckled. “He had to ask anyway.”

 

Leslie passed the cigarette back to Irial and snuggled against Niall’s chest, feeling his scars. “I have to make up my exams,” she explained. “I told my professors there was… a death in the family.” Irial chuckled at that too; she let herself grin even as Niall’s arm settled around her more firmly.

 

“But,” she continued, “Maybe I could come visit for a couple weeks after I’m done?”

 

“We’ll be waiting for you,” replied Niall, and Leslie smiled against his skin.

 

Maybe it could work.

  
  



End file.
